weekend joys

the weekend was great. i got to meet more cousins i've not seen in about 10 years. everyone was in great form.
then on sunday my whole family came over to the apartment and stayed until today. it was cool.

we went into town yesterday and i bought some plugs for my ear. it's at 6mm now - has been at that for the last few years. i always figured i'd put in the effort to get it to 8, but i was just never bothered. so it's staying at 6 forever. i bought three really cute plugs - i have photos.





yea. they are the motivation behind this post.

i spent today (after everyone left - that really feels like yesterday, or last week or something) editing draft 3. chapter 1 is considerably different now. a little more action packed. penelope_stone tells me the book is too action packed as it is, but i'll sort all that out when i get to it. for now, the start needs more action.

hmmmm, yea. i got a bit sunburned over the weekend. lordkilljoy is off in australia and we are getting better weather here. it's mad. but good. nothing like a bit of warm sunlight.

deadlines

oh my god, i hate tight deadlines. always in college i'd get stuff done a week or a few days before the deadline so there was never last minute stress.
i just finished an assignment and was editing up to the last 10 minutes. i got it uploaded with 8 minutes to spare on the deadline. phew! what a rush. and not really in a good way. it wouldn't really do to miss a deadline on my second assignment.
ah well, it's done now. all i can do now is wait for feedback on stuff i got wrong. hopefully not that much. i spent ages going over it to make sure it was ok.

i kinda feel like i have loads to do and no time in which to do it. hmmm. i should make out a list. that will definitely help to de-abstractise things. :giggle: i just made up a word. it's amazing how this still entertains me :)

Yea. i think i'm tried. i get to the end of a paragraph and my brain just goes: stop, no thoughts here.

yea. i'm going to go now.

washing randomness

i put two white sheets into the wash today. one came out light blue, the other came out a dull sort of purple. (yes, i do just chuck everything into the same wash regardless of colour, because the only non-coloureds we have are sheets, and it's not worth putting on a whole wash just for them.)
and i wouldn't even mind, but it's not like we don't have colour catcher sheets. and they do work. oh well. that's what i get for assuming / hoping stuff won't run. the blue sheet looks kinda good, though. it died very evenly. i even had to ask myself if we'd actually been sleeping on a blue sheet. but no, we hadn't. the other sheet is pretty evenly died (a little darker in the corners) but it's not a very nice colour. it can be the spare room's spare sheet.

so yea. they are now drying in the sitting room. they don't really fit on the clothes horse and now that lordkilljoy is gone away, i can put the clothes where ever i like.

i've been listening to deftones' new album, diamond eyes. i'm enjoying it. beauty school is my favourite so far, followed by the title track. it's very deftones. but i love their sound, so i'm good with that.

i went to see robin hood yesterday. it was an engaging 2 hour 20 minute diversion. but that's all it was, really. a fun thing to watch to pass the time.

afterwards, i went out to dalkey quarry, and ran up the hill to the top (there are stairs). it was good. the views from up there are spectacular - you can see way out into the irish sea on one side, and over dublin on the other.
then me, penelope_stone and liam went to nandos. yum. and then we went home and watched gladiator (skipping over all the boring bits). heh. i could call it a ridley scott afternoon.

typing myself into oblivion

news, news, news.

i did my first assignment over the week. i ended up typing over 10,000 words in 8 hours. my hands were a bit sore afterwards. typing up voices takes an incredible amount of time. and i don't really think it matters how fast you are, because you get to a bit where you can't hear and you spend about 20 minutes just trying to decipher it. anyway - i had fun doing it. people speak really weirdly when you actually listen to them.

penelope_stone is coming up this weekend. that will be fun. i was going to go to carlow, but that's not happening now.

i'm back playing oblivion again. :scratch head: yea. i didn't think that would happen either, but i decided to play it on the xbox - just a quick run through of the main quest (and possibly the thieves' guild quest line, because i never finished it) and i got hooked. i'm going thieves, mages, main and deadra quests (and some random stuff). and once i get better at killing stuff, i'm going to join the dark brotherhood. hmmmm. i was only going to play for a week or something... oh well. (oh yea, my character is kind of pretty too. not as pretty as her in my icon, but pretty enough.)

i'm messing around with wordpress at the moment too. it's incredibly flexible with designs and layouts and stuff. you can design it any way you want. it's brilliant.

lordkilljoy is in singapore at the moment. i had an awful dream last night about being at home on my own, and all these men got into the house and were chasing me around the place. i tried to hide in the bathroom, but they broke down the door. it was awful.

crickets, crickets everywhere

lots of news. going to sum up the main bits, and go into detail on the kerfuffle in the kitchen today.

right - since i last posted, i got a job. i'm doing freelance transcription, which is great. i get to write (even if i don't get to create), i don't have to worry about getting into dublin for 9 in the morning, and i can go make tea whenever i want (it's work-from-home, if you hadn't guessed). fantastic.

saturday was my cousin, audrey's, confirmation. i went over to their house with denise. their house is beautiful, and so big. the day was good, got to meet aunts and uncles, and granny again. and i get to do it all again this weekend, because it's my cousin, conor's, confirmation. i'm looking forward to it - i'll get to see even more people.

i've started draft 3 of my novel. lots more changes in this draft, but not quite as drastic as the changes between drafts 1 and 2. i'm tackling the first chapter this week. i'm giving myself a week on ch1 and then a day for the rest of the chapters. until ch 14 (or whatever - the one that used be chapter 6) then i have to devote some time to making large changes again.

so today, or more accurately this evening: it seemed like a normal evening, had dinner, watched doctor who. and then i decided to water yoshi's tank and clean out his pool. normal enough tasks. but while i was at it, i decided to clean his little waterfall / fountain thing. i lifted off the top "rock" and in the pool of water underneath was a little floating island of critters. or critter larvae. all swimming around like bacteria under a microscope. awful. anyway i dumped them down the sink and washed out the waterfall and all was well.

but the god of tricks wasn't done with me yet. thirsty after my exertion, i got a drink. as i closed the glasses press, the smoothie maker fell from the shelf above it. but it didn't just fall onto the ground (no - that would have been too easy). it fell onto the tub of crickets (yoshi's food) and crickets, cricket poo, porrige and shed skins went everywhere. well the last three fell on the ground and on the counter and stayed put. the crickets fell on the counter and on the ground and immediately scurried for the closest dark space.

they ran under the dishwasher, under the washing machine, behind the cooker, under the microwave - even into the cracks in the tile grouting. we picked up as many as we could find, but i know for a fact there are at least three still loose in the kitchen. gooo. i'll be seeing them scurry across the floor for the next month - if not more.